Huck Stands The Test Of Time

February 23, 1985|By Ernest P. Williams.

When I started teaching in a black college more than 30 years ago, ``The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn`` was required reading for all freshmen. And it remained so for a number of years. It was even used as a source book for research papers on certain aspects of slavery. It was dropped only as a result of a change of anthologies. However, I have since chosen it from time to time as a reading selection for my own classes. In all, then, I have periodically dealt with the novel for more than three decades--often rereading it and frequently reading critical commentaries on it.

In all these years, my black students have never raised objections to reading ``The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.`` If criticism is solicited, it will most often pertain to things that readers in general may comment about. The students would never deal with the novel as though Jim is the only character in it, or as though he is the only character whose portrayal falls short of the ideal. Their reactions to the novel remained the same even after the institution started becoming integrated.

When some black parents in New York State objected to the book some years ago, I placed a questionnaire at the end of a test on the novel. Students were asked to indicate whether they found the book offensive, whether they would suggest it to friends and whether I should continue assigning it to other classes. Overwhelmingly, they said the book is not offensive, that they would suggest it to friends and that I should continue assigning it.

I suspect that my students might have found the novel objectionable had I asked them to dramatize certain sections of it in class, or had I engaged them in some discussion that required the use of the word ``nigger`` in every other sentence, or had I personally suggested that reading it would probably

``traumatize`` them and make them feel uncomfortable. But I never did any of those things. Some of them would be ridiculous, and others would be unnecessary for understanding, enjoying and discussing the book.

Because of my experience with teaching the novel, I am deeply dismayed and saddened by the persistent objections raised by certain people to it. I am not more saddened by the fact that the utterly deaf cannot hear beautiful music or that the totally blind cannot enjoy beautiful paintings.

It would seem that the most inefficient and unsophisticated readers could somehow sense the deadly thrust of Mark Twain`s scathing satire and irony. But such appears not to be the case.

It is a pity that some authority cannot peremptorily decide that ``The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn`` should always remain on the shelves of our libraries and on the reading lists of our educational institutions. If such could happen, we could cease wasting time trying to convince the inefficient readers among us that the novel is not just so much ``racist trash,`` just as we no longer waste time trying to convince some people that the world is actually round and that no harm would come to them if they happen to look over their left shoulder on moonless nights.